Got the MGS collection. I started MGS1 on normal and realised that I'm basically just looking at the radar to play the game and it's too easy. Can't remember if I was doing that when I was young too!
Restarted it on hard and now I have to actually scout my surroundings and play a stealth game.
The what are you playing article of Eurogamer was one of the highlights of the week but they've ruined it with their terrible new comment section update.
Only hope is to look out for a copy on a marketplace.
Ah ok thanks.
This was a case of Nintendo being Nintendo and only bafflingly having the game available for a silly limited period. Might be hard to find at RRP now as it’s out of print.
A friend is looking for Mario 3D All Stars but can't seem to buy it anymore and cex selling for 110 euro. Anyone know of a place to get a copy at rrp?
Valve have also released high quality video footage of the never presented 2002 E3 demon of Half Life 2.
Some of what's shown had previously been seen in pre-release trailer footage but a lot of it hasn't been shown before.
Valve have also uploaded a 2000 SIGGRAPH Demo that's referred to as the Free TV Demo which show's very early stage development footage of Half Life 2. Demo was mainly used as developer recruitment tool.
They also released a high quality video of the 2003 E3 demo which previously was only available in low quality shakycam footage.
This doc is kind of amazing
Seeing the amount of weight and discourse people are giving to the annual Geoff game awards on social media is absolutely baffling until you realize they are gamers and the same people that accepted 30 fps is cinematic as an excuse during the PS360 era.
The absolute highest settings on my PC take up 500mb of vram, it's the least intensive new game I've played in a long time. I'm pretty sure it plays extremely well on switch.
Also on PC it's stupidly locked to 1080p so I imagine the PS5 version is as well and the switch probably runs native 1080p. Looks gorgeous despite the low resolution. It's perfect fit for handheld gaming so probably best on switch.
Portable Dragon Quest is the best Dragon Quest, comfiest way to play the comfiest game.
Trying to figure out which console to get it for. switch for portability? or ps5 for graphical glory on the tv?
Been playing Dave the Diver over the last few days. Nice little game, very well done and really like the graphic style. Been enjoying a few indie ‘rogue like’ games recently, Brings me back to playing games as a kid where there was no save feature. Vampire Survivors is a great little game to fill half an hour here and there. Like crack. Anyone played Streets of Rogue? Heard a lot of great things about it. Looks good fun with a lot of variety
Japan agrees https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/11/random-japanese-clinic-closes-to-let-staff-play-dragon-quest-iii-hd-2d-remake
Dragon Quest 3 HD is the videogame equivalent of a warm hug with some hot chocolate and chocolate chips cookies.
I think that's the less hyperbolic version of what I'm saying.
Every game is the sum total of its parts, and the balance of the game will often determine how important the story is to the game.
Even the walking sims like the Telltale games such as The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us etc, the story is arguably more important than gameplay because the gameplay of those games is to facilitate the story. Whereas obviously games like Zelda and Mario, the story barely registers because those games are purely about the gameplay.
I've played through games which weren't great but I was enjoying the story and wanted to see it through. I've played games where I spent half the story cutscenes checking my phone because I couldn't care about it and just wanted to get back to the gameplay.
Story is just one part of a whole. It's become a bigger and bigger part as performance capture has improved, better writing and direction and basically just how gaming has evolved, but it can still add so much to a game when implemented correctly and for the right reasons.
The main types of games Nintendo do... it's not really required.
A story doesn't have to be amazing, but I do need something to keep pushing me on if the gameplay isn't hooking me. An example for me would be the DmC games. Allegedly some of the best games of their type, but the cheese they call a story basically stopped me playing. And I should like the combat in it, its kinda up my street, but I just couldn't listen to them. On the other side, I really enjoyed playing Forspoken, and while the story wasn't great, it was something that wasn't as cheesy. It was a reason to keep enjoying the gameplay, rather than something that totally puts me off.
That's just the way some of us are though. Always each to their own. I'd love to see what Nintendo could do with proper power. They're excellent with what they have, and I get the argument that the limitations allow them to get more creative, but I bet they'd produce something spectacular with power akin to the PS5. Astrobot shows what could be possible.
I'm not for a second saying a game can't be great without good writing or story. There are plenty of purely mechanical games that would rank among my all-time favourites. I can name quite a few games I think are well worth playing despite janky, half-baked or even non-existent core mechanics, but I think they need to be exceptionally interesting to away with it (either in terms of writing, art or presentation). Very few games can get away with being a purely tone and story piece in the way something like Kentucky Route Zero is.
But by the same token, I think it's far, far too simplistic to say writing should always be bottom of the list or a minor consideration. Disco Elysium is for my money one of the greatest games of all time, and it would not have reached those heights had the world not been so deeply realised and the writing so endlessly rich & creative. Same thing with Baldur's Gate 3 - again, a joy to play on a mechanical level, but it wouldn't work half as well as it did if the story was thrown together at the end of development. Yes, Golden Idol would not be as good if the overarching mysteries weren't so compelling - ditto Outer Wilds, Obra Dinn etc… The mechanics are vital, but I think those games excel because of the harmonious level on which everything is operating.
My point is simply every game demands different priorities. Aonuma's approach is interesting, and has worked tremendously well for Zelda - though I don't think anyone thinks that series is particularly noteworthy for its writing (though I do think there's some surprisingly great stuff in Tears of the Kingdom when the story and gameplay are working in harmony at the end). But other canonical, widely beloved games have clearly benefited from putting much more weight on writing from a nascent stage of the developlement process than Aonuma does.
I didn't say it wasn't important, it's just very far down the list. Nintendo knows to start with mechanics and once you nail them, then build your game around them. It's ok to have a story built up around a game first but if you can't build fun mechanics around it then it's best to drop the game.
I'd even put sound ahead of story. I've had plenty of demos that felt off until the sound effects were put in. Putting a story into a game that plays badly means you have a game that plays badly but with a good story.
The biggest morons you will meet in game development will come to you with their idea, then proceed to spew story and lore at you until you ask them how does it play and they've got nothing.
I still think with all the games you've mentioned despite being story heavy are built around solid underlying mechanics. Would rise of the golden idol still be a fun game if the writing wasn't as sharp? Ive played and loved loads of JRPGs that had bad writing but were mechanically very satisfying.
You bring up Baldurs Gate 3 but if you go back to Baldurs Gate 2, the icewind dale games were pure dungeon crawlers built on BG2's mechanics that where well loved despite being lesser games without the focus on narrative.
VNs are kind of an exception since they are more like books that games.
Anyway if you don't agree with me ask yourself how many games you absolutely adored that had no story or a poor one because they were so mechanically good. Then ask yourself have you absolutely adored a mechanically poor game that had an amazing story. For me I think back to the original Nier which I really liked because the story was good but I just can't love because it's so mechanically dull.
Ultimately a game can have a rubbish story, or no story at all, and still be great.
A game with a brilliant story that’s a a complete chore just means I’ll never finish it.
It’s great when it can have both, but I can’t think of a single instance of a game I didn’t enjoy that I finished just to see what happens in the story.
Eh, I think it's far too prescriptive to say story is the least important element in designing a game in every case. For something like Zelda - a series where the story has mostly been a fairly light extra dressing on top - sure, it's something done late in the day. Countless games where the gameplay flow is very much the main event. But given I'm playing both Rise of the Golden Idol and Metaphor: Refantazio at the moment, those particular experiences suggest it'd be fairly mental to not have a much closer relationship between the design and story work in development. They will both inevitably feed off each other and the game will be better for it.
As with everything in video game design, there's no one size fits all solution. What works for Nintendo is unlikely to work identically for Larian, even if I'm sure some experiences are shared. Hell, what works for the Zelda team is unlikely to work for the Famicom Detective team.
110% agree with this. any good game mechanic is enough to wield a story around. The important thing is making the game actually fun. Gravity Rush always felt like a good example of this, loved zooming all around the place in that game, but couldn't tell you at all what the story was because it never stuck with me, but I still think it was one of my favourite games on the Vita
Might explain why Nintendo games don't appeal to me anymore... Odyssey is a great game. But there is no story, so I struggled to finish it and not a hope I'll do a clean up. But it does explain the complete randomness of parts of Odyssey. Hearing that about Zelda makes me less interested tbh.
But I can't see why a hybrid approach wouldn't work. Freedom to refine the tech but with a general story in mind.
As I've been saying for years and keep getting **** about it, when it comes to game design story is probably the least important element of it:
Good article on my favourite console:
The first is so damn good. I only stumbled upon the Curse last month and am nearly finished it (albeit still have the dlc). So it's great to have this waiting, can't wait.
Also, for anyone who has Netflix, Curse is free!
I have minus interest in League of Legends, never played it and never will but Arcane is the best video game film/TV media ever.
I didn't realise there was an episode for Exodus in this. Not a single screenshot has been released thus far, but I've been following the development closely (it's very Mass Effecty, with some cool ideas and designs). Also looking forward to the Sifu episode!
Just want to see if they do something good with armored core. Couldn't care less about the rest.
